Let's Eat!


Yowza! It's a Thanks Giving Feast of Words.

When I called for thankful-themed writing, I had no idea the response would be so rich. I'm delighted with the offerings, and happy to be surrounded by friends old and new, near and far. Let's feast!

We'll start with a piece by singer-songwriter Jo Jo Russell Krajick, who explains that Ryan Road "is a private dirt lane traversing a farm near Rhinebeck, NY."

Walking Private Ryan

I never walk alone down this quiet road lined with ivy choked oaks,
Some hollowed out apartment houses for squirrelly creatures
Who dart and peak and stare and hide and live
And remind me whose neighborhood this road traverses.  

I never walk alone as the road is crowded with other friends and acquaintances
Who fly overhead and swoop thru branches or creep thru the grasses
Or cluster for warmth in the rolling fields with their tagged ears,
Some thousand pounds of stately flesh and hooves posing blankly in the breeze.  

I never walk alone for I am kept company by my ever-present thoughts
Though moments before confounded, disturbed and annoyed,
Now tagging along serenely and full of youth and vitality
Like an innocent child of the world skipping along clueless, happy.  

I never walk alone over the intimately familiar winding pathway,
A thread whose length is long enough to mend the small tears in my daily fabric,
Whose width and breadth and panorama open my eyes to the skies,
The landscape, the earth and the endless possibilities of my life before me.    

 — Jo Jo Russell Krajick


Let's continue, with a poem by Senitila McKinley, director of Seashore Family Literacy, and an artist whose latest work is creating colorful paper mache bowls.

making common bowls

delivered flowers today
to the living and the dead
food as well to the hungry
there is no place for me to eat
the table heaps of my own creations
you would call it messy
I am lonely, mess is now my best friend 
I am grateful that I can find joy
in turning old papers into bowls.

 

Please pull up a chair and join in the feast. Share your poems, paragraphs, prayers and praises in the comments section below, or send by email to dcm@drewmyron.com.

In this feast of words, more is the merry. We could be feasting all week!


Feast of Words!

In the spirit of thanks giving, please join me for the second annual Feast of Words!

I've set the table and I'm ready to eat. Please share with me your poems, prayers, paragraphs & praise.

Send me your words — small starts, lines of hope, your stories, your flash, your fiction, your long list or one true thing.

I'll collect and gather, and post your works here. Got a blog or a book? Send a link, and pass the potatoes.

To take part, simply post your thankful-themed word-works in the comment section below, or email me at dcm@drewmyron.com.

It's the season of gratitude. Let us savor and share.

 

On Sunday: Bandaging the Words

A page from Melody: The Story of A Child, an erasure poem by Mary Ruefle.

"I use white-out, buff-out, blue-out, paper, ink pencil, gouache, carbon, and marker," Ruefle explained in Gulf Coast journal. "Sometimes I press postage stamps onto the page and pull them off–that literally takes the text right off the page! Once, while working on an all-white erasure, I had the sense I was somehow blinding the words–blindfolding the ones I whited-out, and those that were left had to become, I don’t know, extra-sensory or something. Then I thought no, I am bandaging the words, and the one left were those that seeped out."

To see more of Melody, go here (provided by Gwarlingo).

To learn more about Ruefle, and her erasures, go here.

 

Thankful Thursday: From the Shallow End

I've got the giggles.

During this month of official thanks giving, many people are posting daily gratitudes on Facebook. But instead of joining in their earnest efforts I feel like the kid in church, doubled over and snorting with inappropriate laughter.

I just wanna have fun.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am splashing in the shallow end. I'll be back to laps and diligence shortly but for now, please join me in gratitude for the light side. It's a large pool, there's room for all sorts of thankful.

Shallow, Light Delights

1.
Poems inspired by the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
This show is a screeching wreck. I can't stand these people, and I can't turn away. Poet Leigh Stein is making art of the camp — or is it camp of the "art" ?

2.
Lipstick
My new favorite is Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain
(yes, the name is ridiculous).

3.
Magazine Binge
Vogue
, Elle, More, Vanity Fair, O  . . .
About twice a year, I indulge in a magazine marathon. I've got more, ummm, literary choices stacked up around the house, but like overloading on junk food, returning to good-for-me reading is so much better after all that easy, nutrition-less munching. 

And speaking of munching . . .

4.
Mixed Nuts —  my everymeal!
It's a salt fix, a party mix, a salad topping, and when you add a few raisins, it's a sweet.

 

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express gratitude for the people, places and things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today?

 

 

What ignited you?

Recognize this book? This 1966 gem — written by Joan and Roger Bradfield, and illustrated by Winnie Fitch — set my career path. From the first page I knew where I was headed:

Who are you? What's your name?
Would you like to play a game?
Let's pretend we haven't met.
I'll ask you questions, now get set.

As a child this book urged and encouraged my natural curiosity. I peppered everyone with questions, and years later, became a newspaper reporter (and later, writer / editor / poet, etc). I'm still asking questions. Intrigued by path, process and personality, always I wonder: Who are you? What shaped your life?

I like this response, from Frederick Buechner in Listening to Your Life:

By the time I was sixteen, I knew as surely as I knew anything that the work I wanted to spend my life doing was the work of words. I did not yet know what I wanted to say with them. I did not yet know in what form I wanted to say it or to what purpose. But if a vocation is as much the work that chooses you as the work you choose, then I knew from that time on that my vocation was, for better or worse, to involve that searching for, and treasuring, and telling of secrets which is what the real business of words is all about.

And in this excerpt from the poem, When I Am Asked, Lisel Mueller poignantly reveals what led her to write:

It was soon after my mother died . . .

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.


Now it's your turn:  

Who are you? Tell me, please, what ignited your writing life?


Thankful Thursday: No Crescendo


When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

- Cynthia Ozick


I expect crescendo. I don't want to be struck on the skull, but I have grown accustom to big gestures that alert body and mind to big events. A vote that will change everything. Battering winds that sever trees. Champagne bottles popping. Every hour something big, pressing, important. It's fix after fix after fix. Everything matters because nothing matters.

Isn't this why we love sunsets? The slow easing, our rapt attention to quiet change. Even while we want to be grabbed by the collar and made acutely aware — feel blood moving, heart beating, skin flushing — we crave calm. We want to hear the smallest bird call, feel the chill of dawn, taste a singular satisfaction.

I don't really want big voices and urgent attention. Draw me, please, to the quiet corner where gratitude lives, and makes room for me.


It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause for appreciation.
What are you thankful for today?


Get Smart: 8 Essential Writing Guides

Money is short, time precious. You like to write and want to get better, but how? Reach for the bookshelf and lead your own course!

There's no shortage of how-to-write guides. To help navigate the plethora, I've culled a list of suggestions that combine my own favorites with those of respected writing colleagues — novelists, essayists, poets, and more. With detailed instructions and concrete examples, the following books serve as valuable guides to improve your writing.

Story Engineering
by Larry Brooks
see also www.storyfix.com

 

MFA in a Box: A Why to Write Book
by John Rember

 

Naked, Drunk, and Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay
by Adair Lara

 

In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop
by Steve Kowit

 

The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets
by Ted Kooser

 

Tangible tools are important, but be sure to also ponder and reflect:

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing
by Richard Hugo

 

Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces
by David Biespel

 

The Writing Life
by Annie Dillard

 

Have I included your favorites? What have I missed?  


Try This: Book Spine Poetry


Listening to your life,

torch the simple truth.

Risking everything,

love always

the imperfect paradise

of gravity & angels.

 

Love a cut-up, a collage, a literary re-mix? Me, too!

Inspired by artist Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books project [via Brain Pickings] I searched my shelves and assembled titles for the spine scramble above. And in the process I rediscovered several loved-but-forgotten books:

Listening to Your Life
daily meditations by Frederick Buechner

Torch
novel by Cheryl Strayed

The Simple Truth
poems by Philip Levine

Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation
edited by Roger Housden

Love Always
novel by Ann Beattie

The Imperfect Paradise
poems by Linda Pastan

Of Gravity & Angels
poems by Jane Hirshfield


Book spine poems are fun — and addictive. I bet you can't try just one!

 

Thankful Thursday: Hunting Season

It's Thankful Thursday.
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
Please join me in a weekly pause
to appreciate people, places & things.

What are you thankful for today?


This land is lush. In August, blackberries. In September, tuna. And now, it's mushroom season.

I live in mushroom country — 70 inches of rain each year makes rich, damp, mushroom earth — and I've turned forager. And like most things in life, it's not the goal but the process that satisfies.

Here, where the forest meets the sea, the woods are thick, immediate. The other evening, at the end of a long day at work, we hike in. For chanterelles — the craggly, coveted fungi with a golden hue.

In just minutes we are surrounded by towering fir and cedar, by old-growth and new moss. Autumn's low-angle sun slices through silhouetted limbs. Hiking up the bank, the air rustles low and slow. My boots crack twigs, thighs brush fern, bird wings flap in the distance. It's this green, this reverent hush, this serene suspension — it is all this I wish to harvest and hold.

I like mushrooms okay, but mostly I like the hunt.

 

Mushrooms

Like silent naked monks huddled
around an old tree stump, having
spun themselves in the night
out of thought and nothingness—


And God so pleased with their silence
He grants them teeth and tongues.

Like us.

How long have you been gone?
A child’s hot tears on my bare arms.

Laura Kasischke

 

Fast Five: Auburn McCanta

Welcome to Fast Five: short interviews with my favorite writers. Life may be short but who doesn't have time for five questions — and a chance to win a great book? (To win, simply post your name and contact info in the comments section. See details below).

Auburn McCanta is an award-winning writer, poet, journalist, and advocate. Surviving a brain tumor nearly 20 years ago inspired McCanta to write her first novel, All the Dancing Birds.

In the story, Lillie Claire Glidden is unraveling. She knows she’s in trouble when she finds her wallet and keys deep in the refrigerator. Not even her favorite red wine can dull the pain of the dreaded diagnosis: Alzheimer’s.

Told from Lillie Claire’s perspective, All the Dancing Birds offers beautiful and terrifying insight into the secret mind of those touched — and ultimately changed — by the mystery of Alzheimer’s disease.

I’m intrigued with the genesis of this novel: your brain tumor. Can you give us a bit of backstory?

I’m a brain tumor survivor of eighteen years. I still remember how my hands trembled in my lap as I received the initial kick-in-the-gut diagnosis that I had a tumor, a little larger than a golf ball, squatting deep and ruinous inside my brain. I was then given the unpleasant task to prepare for a number of terrifying outcomes, each one more frightening than the one before. In the world of brain tumors, full recovery is generally the last item on a long list of other more probable and very unkind possibilities. Nevertheless, with a gifted surgeon, a great deal of love and support and the luck to have inherited my grandmother’s stubborn Irish streak, I was given the gift of a shiny new life.

During the months following surgery, I taught myself to walk again, to talk again. To live again.

It seemed only natural after surviving a brain tumor, that I would develop a keen interest in other brain diseases as well. As time went on, I spent many years with family members and friends who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. After my own experience as a brain tumor patient, it dawned on me one day—like lightning in a bottle—that I retained the ability to think, even when it wasn’t clear to anyone else. I compared my early days following brain surgery, when I was unable to intelligently communicate, to the latter days of my loved ones with Alzheimer’s, who were equally unable to communicate. In recalling how difficult it was to locate and form words (a condition called, aphasia), it occurred to me that even in my darkest times, when my reasoning was skewed or my thoughts were slow in forming, I nevertheless retained the ability to think—however narrow those thoughts might have been. I retained a lively imagination and, even when I felt jumbled with medication or all those blind alleys I wandered through within the quiet of my mind, I still never stopped thinking. Similarly, I’ve watched dementia patients, silent and sometimes unapproachable, light up whenever someone might simply stop, take their hand, look into their face, and croon a soft hello.

It’s the notion that thought does not cease—regardless the circumstance—that I wanted to fictionalize.

I believe insight and knowledge is as possible through fiction as it is through clinical and nonfiction studies, that fiction teaches and illuminates and clarifies in different ways. A story can surprise and educate in creative ways; it can let readers explore difficult subjects through imagination and storytelling.

Statistics can be so clinical. You managed to turn dramatic data (5.5 million people in the U.S. with Alzheimer’s!) into a personal story that is both moving and illuminating. How were you able to capture the inner life of this disease of deterioration?

Alzheimer’s disease has been described as a rabbit hole into which entire families fall but, unlike Alice, there is no return to normal.

There is no single look to Alzheimer’s, just as there is no particular demographic that is either susceptible or immune. For those with Alzheimer’s, every place from which to be productive and giving, to be restored, to be welcomed, to be themselves, to give physical expression to their changing personalities, is removed. These are, quite simply, people slowly deprived of their unique humanity.

Although I allowed Lillie Claire’s thoughts to incorporate intelligent and robust language until the end (obviously, I took a great deal of literary license), she wanted it that way. Characters are like that for writers—they can be pushy! Lillie Claire wanted her story to be written as if she were fully able to speak into to the heart of each reader. She wanted everyone to know that even when she was silent, or had thoughts that didn’t exactly capture reality, or when she appeared not to have thoughts at all, she was still able to feel pain and joy. She was always able to think something. Researchers and caregivers confirm that even in the final days of Alzheimer’s, there is still a thread of connection to thought and feelings. Discomfort can be felt. Loneliness is an emotion still available to a dying patient, even when that person is otherwise silent on the issue. If All the Dancing Birds is able to communicate the concept that we remain thinking individuals until the end, then I’ve done something good to help promote human communication when all evidence points otherwise.

All the Dancing Birds is the story of one woman’s long and wrenching struggle with Alzheimer’s, but it also strikes me as a novel about empathy. Each of the main characters – son, daughter, caregiver, even Lillie Claire herself – respond differently to Lillie Claire’s declining health. Was this an intentional path while writing the book?

I’m most proud to have taken a task that was said to be impossible and create a work of imagination, illumination and creativity. Finding the interior of Alzheimer’s disease was more than imparting clinical information—it was like grabbing hold of a sticky bee’s nest and coming away without getting stung. Giving readers the information that thought continues even when words are gone could only have been told by my spunky Lillie Claire who allowed me to pile every uncomfortable aspect of Alzheimer’s on her small shoulders. She never whimpered that I’d given her too much, and for that, I’m proud of her and proud of me.

When I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, I quickly found that there were as many different responses to me as there were stars in the sky. Each of my children found the path that was most comfortable for them to confront a frightening diagnosis given their mother. I called out the memory of my children as I allowed Bryan and Allison to form their responses. I also gave Lillie Claire the gift of her own response to her failing mind and crumbling body. In their own way, even John Milton the Cat and the dear little patio birds responded to Lillie Claire’s progressive changes. As odd as it might sound, as the author, I even gave myself an opportunity to change along with Lillie Claire.

I love that your main character is a writer and poet. Were you, like Lillie Claire, shaped by literature?

When I was just four, I became sick with Rheumatic Fever. At the time, treatment was paired with strict bed rest in hope that a common outcome of heart valve damage could be avoided. My mother sat with me every day for six months, teaching me letters and words and a love for literature. Not content with “See Spot Run,” my mother encouraged me to read large and impressive stories. So, at four and a half, I was reading everything I could find. We wound our way through Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Br’er Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland and the Little House books. We read Nancy Drew. We read The Golden Book of Poetry.

Books have always been how I link myself to this often confusing world. Words give wings to those who read.

Your novel was many years in the making. When we met (at the 2008 Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference) your novel had already seen several drafts, and you had experienced encouragement followed by discouragment. How did you maintain the heart and drive to see the book to print?

During times when life interfered with active writing, I nevertheless kept a running story in my head. Sometimes months would go by when I was unable to devote time to writing, but those seemingly dry periods were still rich with what I call “head writing.” During those times, I imagined my way through the lives of each of the characters. Without writing down a word, I found intimacy with each person—Lillie Claire, Brian, Allison, Jewell, even a cashier in a small super market scene. I knew what each character wanted to say and how they wanted to tell their story.

Every step of the way, it seemed I met resistance to tell the story of Lillie Claire from a first person perspective. I was discouraged by many “professionals,” with admonitions that a story presented from inside the mind of an Alzheimer’s sufferer was impossible.

I thank each person who hammered away at how “unrealistic” it was to continue with such an improbable story. Being dissuaded and discouraged by others allowed me to become steel, to write with the heart of a lion, while still floating like dandelion seeds on a summer breeze. I love every person who said I couldn’t because in the end, they gave me the gift of “I did.” Writing All the Dancing Birds was a daily practice of love, a story both soft and big, a moment for me to have a conversation with every person who has ever been sick, or is with someone who is sick, or who may become sick one day. It’s a story for all, but I hope it speaks only to you.

Bonus Question: I’m a word collector and urge others to keep a running list of favorite words. What are your favorite words?

My first favorite word is “You,” followed (in alphabetical order) by,

cherish – What a beautiful word, meaning to hold one dear.

defenestrate – meaning to throw out of a window. Writers often consider doing this to our manuscripts when we struggle with a scene.

diaphanous – pretty and evocative, like the texture of light hovering above water.

eponymous – The word just floats off the tongue, doesn’t it?

flapdoodle – Who wouldn’t laugh over this word?

propinquity – proximity or nearness. This word reminds me of how we need to stay close to one another, and always be glad for our connections.

writer – well, of course.

Win this book!

To win All the Dancing Birds by Auburn McCanta, post your name and contact info in the comments section below. Feeling shy? Send an email with "Book Drawing" in the subject line, to: dcm@drewmyron.com

A winner will be announced on Monday, October 29, 2012.

Can't wait? Buy now! All the Dancing Birds is available in print and on kindle.

 

 

Thankful Thursday: Lighten up, Francis

It's been a bit heavy around here, no?

I like dark, and appreciate morose, but sheesh, enough already. Bring on the dancing horses!

On this Thankful Thursday (Light Edition), I am thankful for:

•  Jellybeans. My latest favorite sweet treat, replacing butter toffee peanuts, which replaced tapioca pudding, which will soon be benched for candy corn — 'tis the season.

•  Scrubbing the floor. Sometimes it feels good to get on hands and knees and rub at stubborn stains, focused on an actual mess instead of the generalized worries cluttering my head.

•  bedraggled - an adjective meaning dirty and disheveled. I love the sound and shape my mouth makes when saying this word.

•  a beautiful line:

Who am I, if not one who listens
for words to stir from the silences they keep.

- from Aubade in Autumn, by Peter Everwine  

 ( and did you catch that name? is it for real? it's so swoony-poetic! )

 
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places, poems (and more), for which we are grateful. What are you thankful for today?

 

A locus through which intensities pass

Hey Writer,
What forms you?

Lidia Yuknavitch, author The Chronology of Water — a fierce, poetic and painful memoir — has some very clear ideas:

1.
I think gender and sexuality are territories of possibility. Nevermind what we've been told or what the choices appear to be. Inside artistic practice the possibilities open back up.

2.
I think narrative is quantum.

3.
I think the writer is a locus through which intensities pass.

4.
I think literature is that which fights back against the oppressive scripts of socialization and good citizenship.

5.
I think the space of making art is freedom of being.

6.
I think things that happen to us are true. Writing is a whole other body.

7.
I believe in art the way other people believe in god.

 

 — from Lidia Yuknavitch's website

 

Thankful Thursday (on Friday): Carry

A friend carries a sobriety chip.
A son keeps an old, worn watch.
A sister wears a cross.

We carry reminders. To encourage and soothe, to calm and comfort. For several weeks I've been carrying a "poem" in my pocket, a prayer really. This is not sermon. I'm not preaching, converting or condemning.

A friend gave me the prayer, and the more I read it the more I appreciate the simple language, the alliteration, and the just plain kindness. Here, an excerpt:

Keep watch with those who work,
or watch, or weep this night . . .
give rest to the weary, bless the dying,
soothe the suffering . . . shield the joyous.

Shield the joyous? See, like a good poem, that's got me thinking.

I don't presume my god is your god. Maybe nature is your higher power, or goddess, or a doorknob. What we share is that at some point in our lives, we are each weepers and workers and watchers.

Today I am thankful for thoughtful friends, and the things we carry that comfort and calm.

 

It's Thankful Thursday. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude. What are you thankful for today? A person, a place, a possession? A story, a song, a poem? What makes your world expand?

 

 

Too Many Annies (and other confusions)


Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty
laid bare, life heightened
and its deepest mystery probed?
. . . We still and always want waking.

― Annie Dillard
The Writing Life

 

I'm late to the party, again.

I just now read The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. It's a stellar collection of essays, and is considered a sort of writer's manifesto. When writers gather, it is this book they quote, or worse — for the uninitiated like me — they give a subtle nod, a slight gesture to suggest their knowing is so deep as to not require enthusiasm. The seminal work was published in 1989, and I just now read it.

And you want to know why?

I resist hype. If everyone is raving about something, I usually walk away. Examples: maxi skirts, mainstream movies. Exceptions: Fifty Shades of Grey (don't judge, I was curious), and the sale rack at Anthropologie.

But more honestly, I confused Annie Dillard with Annie Proulx.

When writers trilled over Dillard, my mind hit ignore. I recalled the long slog through The Shipping News, and couldn't bear another grey and dismal tale set in some grey and dismal hinterland. When the book won the Pulitzer, I abandoned my "don't be a sheep" mantra, and embarked on the longest, most laborious, read of my life.

But here's the rub: The Shipping News is a novel by Annie Proulx. Not Annie Dillard.

All these years, in my haste to gather, read, learn and log, I had confused the two Annies.

But wait — the admission deepens.

I also confuse the two Richards: Richard Russo and Richard Ford. Both accomplished contemporary novelists. Both with the same dang name. Too many times to count, I have bought and borrowed a book by Richard Ford thinking it was Richard Russo, and vice versa. Just as I am sinking into the couch with book and enthusiasm, I realize it's not "my" Richard, but the other, less favored, one.

And don't even start about multiple book covers. How many times have I bought a book by Elizabeth Berg, thinking it was one I had somehow managed to never read, then realized just a few pages in that, yes, in fact, I had already read the book.

So, what's the lesson, the message?

1.
If you're a writer, pick a unique pen name.
Too many Richards confuses dimwits like me.

2.
If you're a reader, slow down.
Admittedly, I spend much of my life skimming. I call it getting the gist. This annoys my husband to no end. He's a slow, take-it-all-in-and-remember reader. Conversely, I read quickly and retain little, which explains, well, everything.  

3.
Read The Writing Life.
It's a really good book by Annie somebody.

 

Thankful Thursday: Door

Lexi White photo

Opening one door, a friend tells me, opens another.

All week I see doors.

A friend shares a poem with me. I like it, fold it, carry it in my purse.

Later, I am in a cafe with another friend. Let's write, we say, and I pull out the poem as a prompt. The room buzzes with conversation and our small table is crowded with spent cups, dirty spoons. We lean in, heads bent, to read the poem aloud. Ohh, that line, we say, and this image. We are moved, lifted. We have opened a door. Pens move across pages. We walk new rooms. We feel possible.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, wrote William Blake, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

The line itself is a door. Jim Morrison's band, The Doors, took its name from Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, the title of which was a reference to a line in Blake's book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

All these doors, these openings to more.

What if we saw every moment as a door. Which would we welcome, walk through, wander? And to what would our wonder lead?


It's Thankful Thursday!
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places & things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today? 

 

Instead of an MFA: 7 Online Options

We're not all academics.

We're working — in bookstores and banks, in law firms and libraries. We're selling insurance, clothes, coffee, and cars. We're tending children, and parents, and bars. We're writing, whenever and wherever we can.

We thirst to improve. But not every writer has the time, money, or life circumstance to pursue a graduate degree.

Every fall Poets & Writers magazine presents the MFA Index, an exhaustive overview of schools offering Master of Fine Arts degrees in writing. In 1936, University of Iowa offered the first. Now, more than 200 schools have MFA programs.

But what about the rest of us? Is there an alternative to the MFA?

How do we hone our skills? Where do we go to stretch and improve our writing? Let's explore some options. Today we'll start with Online Writing Classes. While a single course is no substitute for a two or three-year degree, several organizations offer sophisticated and valuable writing classes. Here's a round-up of respected organizations offering quality online instruction.

7 Online Writing Classes

Cambridge Writers' Workshop
Offering creative writing courses running six to 10 weeks, in a variety of genres.

Chicago School of Poetics
Offering online classes fostering innovative poetics. Students use visual web conferencing, desktop sharing, and collaborative whiteboards. The school offers "an alternative to, and a community beyond, the Creative Writing MFA."

Gotham Writers' Workshop
With more than 7,000 students annually, this New York-based organization is one of the most popular writing resources. Their interactive classes have been named Best of the Web by Forbes magazine. Six and 10 week workshops available in seemingly every genre.

The Loft Literary Center
Classes for adult and youth, online and on-site, all writing genres. Serves beginning, intermediate and advanced writers.  

Stanford Continuing Studies
The Writer's Studio offers approximately 20 courses every quarter in the principal genres of creative writing— novel, short story, poetry, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting. All writing levels welcome.

WoodSprings Institute
University-level literary instruction, offering workshops in poetry, short story, novel, creative non-fiction, and memoir. Also: manuscript mentoring and MFA prep courses.

Workshops with Molly Fisk
Poet Molly Fisk pioneered Poetry Bootcamp, a five-day poetry intensive, and also offers A Voice of Your Own, a six-week workshop exploring prose, poetry and more.


Have you taken an online writing class? Have you taken a class with any of these organizations, or others? Tell us about it!